Friday night fights
And Thursday night. And Wednesday morning.
And Saturday afternoon.

by Terri Mauro

Playing now at my house, every morning, every evening, every waking moment: It’s the Sibling Rivalry Wars! The excitement never ends, nor does Mama’s pounding headache.

In this corner, weighing in at a skinny 40 pounds, is The Little Brother. He’s small but quick, darting in to slug or scratch his sister before the referee can intervene. He attacks with stealth, while peacefully watching TV, while passing in the hall, out of nowhere. He apologizes with a jaw-dropping lack of sincerity. His tiny lungs hurl insults and provocations at ear-piercing volume. When his dreaded rival emerges from school with her classmates, he shouts “You’re Stupid! You’re Stinky!” If anybody else said such things to this girl, the referee would have to report him to the principal. But The Little Brother operates under a cloak of impulsivity and family immunity that makes it difficult for the referee to exact appropriate punishment. She hopes his speech impediment renders his words indecipherable to the other children. They are not indecipherable, however, to...

...the competitor in this corner, The Big Sister. Weighing in at a whopping 80 pounds, her superior size and strength would give her the upper hand in any physical confrontation, but she is forbidden to exercise that advantage. So she wields her superior skills at sarcasm to wound her opponent. Whatever he says, she greets with “Whatever” and a roll of the eyes. Whatever he does, she downgrades. When he weaves some plans for a game of pretend, she points out he’ll still be in his room the whole time. Words like “Liar!” “Fraidycat!” and “Copycat!” roll of her tongue, precipitating endless bouts of “Am not!” “Are too!” and “I’m right and you’re wrong.” When her brother retreats to his room and tells her to “Go Away,” she must necessarily stand in his doorway and glare at him, forcing him to shout “Go Away” yet louder and louder still until the referee cries for mercy. When her enemy is being too loud or too annoying or simply too present, she brings out her ultimate weapon: the Hand Before the Eyes. She is able to obliterate his very existence simply by blocking her vision of him. Or so she hopes.

In the middle, having a really bad day, is the referee, otherwise known as Mama, or more commonly as “Mooooooooooom, he/she’s bugging me!” She knows that this sort of rivalry is perfectly natural and normal, and not expressly designed to drive her batty. These are developmentally delayed kids, they are siblings by adoption, they are speech impaired, all this interaction and on-target kid-stuff is good. It’s good. It’s good. She repeats this over and over, hoping it will block out the sound of the skirmishes. It does not. She is happy they are doing something right. Really she is. But she wants them to CUT IT THE HECK OUT anyway. Be nice to each other. Be nice to their mama. Be quiet.

The referee is dreaming.

Baggers with attitude
You'll pick the plastic if you know what's good for you.

by Terri Mauro

It was bad enough when supermarket checkers started giving us the choice of paper or plastic. I mean, after you spend an hour choosing between 10 or 12 permutations of every simple product, you shouldn’t have to make a choice about what to put them in. And especially not such a thorny choice--kill a tree, or choke a landfill? Whichever one you pick, you will immeditely read somewhere that it was a bad idea. Do I really have to deal with this after wading through 150 types of cereal?

The choice got simpler when my son developed a whole world of pretend play around plastic bags. He enjoys roaming the house with them, putting things inside them, moving the things to another part of the house, emptying the bags and filling them with other things. He pretends to be playing recycling, but nothing ever gets recycled, just rearranged. He hasn’t quite gotten the idea yet that of all the things you put in plastic bags, your head should not be one of them. Nor does he understand that if you tear one of those bags in little pieces and your mother does not pick them all up and your baby cousin swallows one, that will be a bad thing. So safety issues and clutter issues now trump environmental issues, and my answer to “Paper or plastic?” has become a resolute “Paper!”

Which makes it all the more annoying that our supermarket seems to have selected plastic. Oh, they still offer a choice. They still have the stacks of brown paper bags ready to be popped open and filled. But when you ask for paper, you’re likely to get a response somewhere between benign ignoring and outright attitude. Yesterday, we asked for paper. We bagged as many groceries as we could in paper. The checker, as if to race us, started filling plastic bags, whether we wanted them or not. Finally, in the spirit of compromise, she put a paper bag inside a plastic bag and filled that. Two environmental disasters for the price of one!

I don’t understand how she could hear our choice and see our choice and yet insist on using plastic. Maybe those soft little plastic bags, already pulled open on their little wire rack, are easier on the fingernails than those big old clumsy paper numbers. But at least she was quiet about it. Another time, we had a checker actually argue with us. We asked for paper, and she pointed out that it was raining, and the paper bag would get wet, and we really should use plastic. We said no, paper would be fine, and she got huffy. She was just looking out for our best interests, after all. And since she knew what was good for us, she went ahead and bagged our groceries in plastic, though we begged her not to. Is there some sort of “For the customer’s own good” directive among supermarket employees? It made me want to invent some story of hideous plastic allergies at my home just to make her feel bad.

I guess I should be glad to have the decision made for me. But if they’re going to make it, then just get the paper bags the heck out of there. Make it an all-plastic emporium. Admit that you’re getting kickbacks from landfill owners. And dispense with the illusion of choice. While you’re at it, just go down the aisles and pick one of everything, so we don’t have to stand staring at the shelves stunned by so many selections. We’ll be in and out of the store in a minute.

Or maybe we’d stay out entirely. But that would be our choice.

Measuring up
Why must all kids keep the same pace?

by Terri Mauro

Well, now, here's the annual Newsweek “Birth to 3” supplement, come into our homes to make us feel badly about our children’s development. Oh, I’m sure there are some people who read it and feel great about their children’s development, or smug--those whose kids measure up perfectly against the magic yardstick, or have sprouted ahead--but most of us surely must look at it with dread, hold our breaths while reading the lists of milestones, panic at each mark that our youngsters haven’t hit.

When, exactly, did childhood become a race? Surely, on some level, everyone acknowledges that every child is different, every one of us develops at our own pace and in our own ways, faster here, slower there. Look at any group of children, and you’ll see diversity. Some are bigger, some are smaller; some talk a lot, some stay silent; some run easily, some lurch about; some are confident, some are shy; some are overachievers, some couldn’t care less. It’s abundantly clear that humanity is not one-size-fits-all.

Yet we’re constantly shown these milestones, in parenting magazines, in parenting books, in Newsweek supplements, on daytime talk shows. How does your child measure up? Should you worry? How can you not? The implication is that every other child at the day care or the nursery school will be running and jumping and skipping and doing advanced algebra, and your child will be sitting in the corner playing with his toes. And though intellectually we may know that there will probably be other toe-players keeping him company, that doesn’t stop the hurt and the worry and the guilt.

It’s particularly hard for parents whose children are decidedly not with the developmental program, those with what are charitably called “special needs.” On a day to day basis, you can love your child, enjoy your child, dote on each hard-fought word and cheer each wobbly step. On a day to day basis, within the reality that is your child, you may not even be aware of his differences. But then comes the IEP meeting or early-intervention evaluation that measures his worth in months instead of years, that puts in concrete how very off the beaten path his development has strayed. Then comes the doctor’s appointment when you have to check off milestones, and find yourself checking very few. Then comes the Newsweek supplement with all the pictures of happy healthy babies who are eating solid food and speaking in full sentences and managing their parents’ stock portfolios. And your undersized toddler’s major achievement in life is producing prodigious amounts of drool. It makes a parent discouraged.

Thankfully, my kids are out of birth-to-3 range, so Newsweek has no hold on me (though I’m sure if I leafed through, I’d see that my 7-year-old is still missing some 3-year-old milestones. I’m sure not going to look.) Still, I wish they’d knock it off. All these inchworms measuring the marigolds that are our children aren’t stopping to see how beautiful they are, in all their permutations of talent and ability. I’d guess that if you looked at any representative group of the most successful, talented, famous grown-ups around, you’d find a fair amount--maybe even a majority--of folks who weren’t the most on-target, on-pace, developmentally adept youngsters. Some of them aren’t all that on-target now. There’s something about the human spirit that can’t be measured. So we should just stop trying.

Or at least stop reading magazines about it.

Playing dress-up
Do clothes make the kid?

by Terri Mauro

If I needed any evidence that I’m an inadequate mother, it’s come in the form of Cinderella Day at my kids’ school. Some bright-eyed educator came up with the idea of celebrating Cindy by letting everybody dress up in some form of fairy-tale finery. The elaborateness required was nonspecific, so I figured maybe we’d go to Burger King the day before and pick up some cardboard crowns with our Whoppers. But then I got to talking with a mom of a kindergardener during library duty, and it turns out the kindergardeners are going to town. One mom bought a $60 costume, another spent $40, and now pressure is on the kindergarden moms to outfit their baby girls right.

Will the 3rd grade moms of my daughter’s classmates be so insane? Will the parents of kids in my son’s small special-ed class? Will my little ones be the only peasants in rags among all the princes and princesses? Do I care?

No, which of course is the problem.

I’m just not a costume mom. I’m not busily making their Halloween outfits. We haven’t even decided what they’re going to be. Last year my daughter was a ghost, wearing a sheet with holes, and I even screwed that up; she couldn’t walk in it, and the eyeholes kept slipping out of place. As for Cinderella Day, who needs it? Can’t they just get dressed, go to school, and learn without accessories?

It’s bad enough that today is picture day, and I had trouble putting together ensembles glamorous enough even for that. My daughter has a couple of skirts and a couple of shirts to go with them that she alternates for church, but no dresses that are nice for pictures but not to restrictive for recess. No cool-weather dresses at all, come to think of it. And shoes--her best dress shoes are an old pair of suede lace-ups that had been sitting in the back of my closet unworn for years. We share a shoe-size now. Too bad she’s too skinny for my dresses.

So she’s going the casual top-and-skirt route, and will probably be surrounded by kids in full finery. My son will be wearing what he wears to school every day, a crew-neck shirt and cords, because he doesn’t have proper dress-up clothes either, and I’m not going to buy some for one day a year. Besides, he’d just suck on the shirt collar and look like a rumpled mess. Might as well be a rumpled mess in something comfortable.

Fortunately, I did see some kids running around in jeans and sweatshirts when I dropped the kids off this morning, so neither of mine will likely be picked out of the picture as the one with the mother who doesn’t know how to dress them for picture day. And that bodes well for Cinderella Day, too. Why go to all the effort of elaborate costumery unless you’re sure that everyone else will be fairy-tale-perfect, too? The only thing worse than being the only one who isn’t dressed up is to be the only one who is.

Parental guidance
Are R-rated movies okay for 6-year-olds?

by Terri Mauro

I saw a sign at our local movie megaloplex (yes, I went to the movies!) that stopped me in my tracks. There, by the ticket sign, in bold capital letters: “For the comfort of all our patrons, no children under 5 will be allowed into R-rated movies.”

I don’t know what unsettled me more: That people would try to bring children under 5 to an R-rated movie, or that it was perfectly okay to bring a 6-year-old. With all the flap lately about teens sneaking into shows to which they are supposed to be accompanied by parent, it’s odd to consider what sort of choices accompanying parents may be making. Does Senator McCain know about this? Maybe this is why movie execs are marketing R-rated films to kiddies: They’re hoping they’ll come and bring mom and dad!

Come to think of it, I have seen people bring a child under 5 to an R-rated flick. The child was an infant, but the film was “Pulp Fiction.” The comfort of this patron would certainly have been increased if those parents had just found a babysitter, for goodness sake. The baby slept through the whole thing, but seeing that stroller in the foreground with so much violence, obscenity and depravity playing on the screen...well, it sure took some of the fun out of it. What could they have been thinking?

Probably that the baby wouldn’t know, or care. But what of a toddler, or a 5-year-old? Do parents really bring in children old enough to enjoy “Toy Story” or “The Tigger Movie” and say, “Today, kids, we’re gonna go see ‘Scream 3’!” Do the youngsters really sit still for this stuff? Even if they aren’t scared out of their little shoes, aren’t they bored out of them? Is the patronly comfort the management is concerned about marred by little ones having to crawl in and out of the aisle to go to the bathroom, go to the snack bar, go to the waterfountain, go to the lobby to look at posters for Pokemon movies, and so on? Do irate moviegoers begin to hope the slasher’s next victim will be those parents?

It’s certainly wise of the theatre to set some rules for this sort of thing, though I bet they get some arguments about it. But why set the bar at 5? Will 6-year-olds behave any better? Perhaps, in addition to setting upper limits, the MPAA needs to think about lower ones, too--since clearly, some parents aren’t up to the job. Ratings, MPAA head Jack Valenti keeps insisting, are to inform and protect parents from exposing their little ones to sex, violence and bad language--but who protects kids from their parents? Surely, for those sense-challenged souls who would bring a baby into a movie where someone gets their head graphically shot off and someone else gets a needle plunged into her chest (and that’s not the half of ‘Pulp Fiction’s’ inappropriateness for the infant set), there need to be guidelines. I wouldn’t want my 10-year-old seeing that stuff. I’m not even sure about most 17-year-olds. And of course there are many, many R-rated movies that are way too intense for ME.

As long as they’re fiddling with the rating system, maybe they should add an R-13--no one under 13 allowed even if their idiot parents think it’s appropriate. Let those people dragging kids to the movies sit through “Thomas and the Magic Railroad” like all the rest of us poor souls. Or do like my husband and I do: Never go to the movies at all!

copyright © 2000 by Terri Mauro